Art is among the experiences I rely on to alter what I am.
—James Elkins, The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing, p. 41.

MEET NAOMI SIEGMANN

NAOMI IS AN ELEGANT, WARM, AND WELCOMING WOMAN who has lived and worked in Mexico for more than thirty years. She’s petite and energetic—and you’d never suspect that she spends her days creating amazingly realistic and innovative sculptures, many of huge proportions, from wood, stone, marble, bronze, plaster, wax, iron, and acrylic. Many of her pieces also include sketches, engraving, direct photo transfer, and homemade paper. She is seen here in her studio.

I met Naomi when in Mexico City in 2007 conducting interviews for another project. She tells me her work has undergone numerous transformations, including experimentation with various mediums. Her hyper-realistic wood sculptures have been acquired by museums and are in private collections both in the United States and in Mexico, and her work has been exhibited in galleries across the United States, Mexico, and in Europe. She has been commissioned to design and cast monumental sculptures in materials such as bronze, steel, and fiberglass for parks, plazas, and building lobbies (see Vuelo).

In 2001 Naomi began organizing an ambitious, international collaborative event to raise forest conservation awareness through art. El Bosque/The Forest consists of a “forest of trees” by a range of artists that traveled on a successful eight-city tour in the United States and Mexico. As Naomi says about her piece Portable Forest, “This will be our future forest if we don't stop deforestation. We'll have to bring our own. Portable Forest is on wheels and can be pulled along as one would a pet.”

To see more of Siegmann’s work, visit www.naomisiegmann.com or contact her at siegmann@att.net.mx.

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MEET DAWN HOWKINSON SIEBEL

I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED ART WITH THE WHISPER OF A STORY BEHIND IT, figurative art that depicts moments of personal history, wonderful in themselves yet somehow letting you know there is an artist’s subtext. The mixed media, oil and collage work of Dawn Howkinson Siebel abounds with subtext that constitutes a discourse between artist and subject.

As Dawn says, “I am interested in stories. They are our foundations, our starting points, our biases. . . They are cultural glue.” Her present work began to evolve when, the year before her father died, he gave her all of the old family photographs—she has used them in her paintings ever since. “Each painting begins with an image scanned, printed in black and white, and collaged onto a wooden panel.” Her goal is to blend the “real” of the photographic image with the “imagined” of the painted surface until it becomes synergistically something beyond either.

Siebel’s work is beautifully rendered and compels the viewer to “read” its story. To me, her work is not only story, it is history evolving, transforming the past into a compelling present, foreshadowing an even more dynamic future.

Dawn works with clients on commissioned pieces created from their own photographs and stories to develop unique heirlooms. To see more of her story paintings, as well as a selection of her assemblages, lightboxes, and murals, visit www.dawnsiebel.com or contact her at info@dawnsiebel.com for information on commissions and galleries where her work can be viewed.

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